From the book
The Golden Chain of Homer
Anonymous (traditionally attributed to Anton Joseph Kirchweger) · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordA magnet is a thing considered as attracting, receiving and transforming a suitable counterpart.
- In the Golden ChainThe elements are magnets to one another; acid draws the volatile, salt fixes incoming seed, and roots receive vegetable nourishment.
- TranslationThe noun often describes a natural relationship rather than a piece of lodestone or a modern magnetic field.
- A place to readB1C09S007 explicitly applies the magnet-name to every element in its reciprocal operations.
Meaning
The magnet is the receiver that draws and holds another thing through an appropriate relation of nature. In the broadest explanation, each element is the other’s magnet: one dissolves and subtilizes, another thickens and coagulates. The term gathers attraction and transformative reception into one image (B1C09S007).
It is not reserved for a single fixed substance. The nitre-and-salt table sets steel against magnet, placing salt on the receiving side, while the prose gives acid a magnetic power over the volatile. The referent depends on which relation and stage is being considered (B1C10S011; B1C19S003).
Use in the book
The elemental passage is especially important because it describes reciprocal operations. Heaven subtilizes air, air water and water earth; in the reverse direction earth thickens water, water air and air heaven. Calling each the other’s magnet means that each can draw, dissolve, coagulate, volatilize or fix through its suitable neighbour. The image therefore includes both directions of the chain and cannot be reduced to a permanently passive lower pole (B1C09S007).
Acid is a magnet when it takes nourishment from the volatile and converts it into its own nature. As it also dissolves earth, it becomes increasingly fixed and alkaline. The changing proportions then determine whether the mixture proceeds toward volatility or fixation. A magnetic relation is consequently part of a process that changes the receiving member too; the magnet is not an unaffected instrument outside the material circuit (B1C19S003; B1C19S004).
The vegetable account gives a competition for seed. Plants seize nitre from rain and dew, while salt attracts the same volatile contribution and tends to fix it into salt. The author says this increases salt’s magnetic quantity and quality, which must again be replenished as plants take nourishment away. The printed correction describing the root as a vegetable magnet locates the same model in an organ of intake. These are text-specific forms of the image, not evidence for an unspecified occult sympathy acting without material passage (B1C22S019; END02S007).
Places to read
- Book I · Ch. 9 · §7Every element can be called the other’s magnet through reciprocal transformation.
- Book I · Ch. 10 · §11The table aligns salt with magnet and nitre with steel among its paired analogies.
- Book I · Ch. 19 · §3Acid magnetically takes the volatile as nourishment and makes it acid.
- Book I · Ch. 22 · §19Salt and plants compete for volatile seed in an account of ongoing magnetic increase and loss.
- Variant Readings and Corrections · §7The corrected text calls the root the vegetable magnet for incoming nourishment and rain.
Translation in this edition
Magnet is an attested source-word, but its surroundings determine whether literal magnetic material or an analogy of attraction is meant. In the elemental and vegetable explanations, the author spells out reception and transformation; no separate physical magnet need be supplied to make the sentence intelligible (B1C09S007; B1C22S019).
Mutter attractionis describes salt as a mother of attraction, fitted to the male-female language of nitre and salt. It should be compared with the steel-magnet row rather than treated as proof that the table fixes every occurrence of Magnet to salt alone (B2C04S002; B1C10S011).